Arizona
by RobertDowneyJrLove
Summary: Lindsay-centric. She finally comes to terms with the death of her mother. Arizona is the name I chose as her middle name and as a name for her mother because I always associated Lindsay with Arizona for some odd reason.


"Linds,"

Her blue eyes stung with tears as she looked up into his dark, chocolate brown orbs before returning her gaze to the lily she had been staring at. His dark brown hair framed his face, his lips were set in a warm, comforting smile and the friendliness that was conveyed through the smile was a contrast to the sting of sad tears in her eyes and the sad frown that had settled over her soft features. Her strawberry blonde hair flickered in the warm, spring wind. The smell of the air after the spring thunderstorm mixed with the fresh scents of blooming flowers and fresh cut grass.

"She was killed in a car crash during a storm." Lindsay whispered sadly, staring at the velvety soft, pure white petals of the lily. Drops of water clung to the velvet flower shimmering in the soft golden sunlight. "She never saw the other car."

Her mother's death was something she rarely talked about and was a bit of a taboo topic with her family. Kevin rarely talked about it, Jack chose to bury himself in whatever his latest scheme to get to Hollywood happened to be and Lindsay ignored it. Until now. She wore a locket around her neck and sometimes she revealed the picture in the locket but other than that, she never talked about her mother.

"I was named after her." Lindsay told him softly, "My middle name. Arizona. That was her name."

Lindsay Arizona. Somehow, it fit her. She was sweet like the name Lindsay, yet at the same time she was fiery and hot like Arizona. She was sweet yet warm, never ending in her mystery and a fiery temper was always simmering beneath the surface of her facade.

"It certainly fits." He told her softly, "What did she look like?"

She let a soft smile flit across her features before settling for a calm yet sad expression. "Dark red hair, bright blue eyes. She was tall, thin and Dad always said that she was sweet."

"You're her daughter, so I imagine she was." He told her, watching as she kept her blue eyes intently focused on the pure white petals of the lily.

She turned to him, her blue eyes dark with tears, some of them caught in her lashes as she met his dark brown eyes. She was sad, grieving over her mother and waiting for someone to tell her that it was okay to grieve, that it was okay to still be upset and grief-stricken.

"It's okay to be upset." He told her softly, "Sometimes, it's good to be upset."

"Is it?" Lindsay asked him softly, "Is it okay to be so upset, you don't know how you get from one day to the next?"

He walked over to her and stood in front of her, blocking her view of the lily as he spoke. "Linds, you live everyday as if your mother never existed. The only memory you have of your mother is in the gold charm you wear around your neck. Being upset-that's normal and if it weren't for the fact that I know you, I might be worried that you aren't as upset as you are."

"Why do I do this?" She asked him as the tears clinging to her lashes slipped down the porcelain skin of her cheek.

"Do what?" He asked her softly, holding her arms.

"Let myself get like this." She told him, shuddering with each breath she took.

"Because you're Lindsay and when you get upset, you just want to cry but you haven't accepted that crying is okay." He told her firmly, "Crying is fine, Lindsay. You've got to cry sometime. Not crying every once and a while, that's not good."

The comforting smile and the warm brown of his eyes brought more tears to her eyes. She stepped toward him and let her head fall to his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. As the tears slipped out of her eyes and sobs wracked her body, he thought about his best friend.

Yes, she was sweet yet warm, mysterious and fiery but she was also grieving over the death of a mother she barely knew. The mother that had been taken from her earlier than she should have been. The more he thought about it, the more he watched her hide her grief behind a sweetness and a warmth that seemed real but never was, the more he watched her hide her grief in a fiery temper, the more the name Arizona made sense.

She was the sweet warmth of an Arizona wind, fiery like the hot temperatures of an Arizona summer yet hiding secrets like the never-ending Arizona deserts.

She was Arizona.

* * *

**I was in a weird mood when I wrote this...I was frustrated, my foot hurt from having a kitchen chair fall on it and the ending sucked until I re-wrote it. I wanted to write something like this because Lindsay never really seemed to acknowledge the death of her mother. She lived as if her mother never existed, as if the only evidence she even had a mother lived in the gold charm around her neck. I never call the boy by name because this is Lindsay-centric but it's Eli. She relied him a lot during the series and I wanted this to reflect that to a point. **

**Love ya, **

**RobertDowneyJrLove**


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